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| Creator | Rasta |
| Engine | Lex Talionis |
| Download | Here |
| Score | 44/80 |
| Rank | 7th |
| FEU Link | Here |
Reviews
Judge 1: Darrman
Gameplay: 4/10
No Grave Unturned’s main gimmicks are the “SP bar” and “heads/tails” effects. Missing is gone, and the accuracy check instead determines whether an attack does full damage or a (usually) reduced glancing blow. Skill and luck, along with critical hits, are completely gone, with the SP bar serving as a replacement for them. Every point of SP gives an extra point of accuracy: it
goes up when killing enemies and having triangle advantage, while it goes down when at low health and being at triangle disadvantage.
However, the chapter itself is not particularly complicated. Most enemies have attack in range AI and do not attack without provokation. As a result, I ended up turtling my way through most of the chapter. The main incentive to hurry up, the bridge getting blown up, didn’t fire until all of my units were across it. Even if a unit dies, they can be revived by the lord for an SP hit.
The top boss didn’t move, despite guard AI being implemented on the armour knights, while the bottom boss could not use his weapons and never moved. While the bridge collapse did get me to head to the left side of the map, I easily escaped with no trouble.
Overall, I do think the chapter has potential, but being able to just bait enemies one at a time is a shame.
Presentation: 2/5
Animations are completely disabled. The music that plays is decent and the portraits are fine, along with the music. Nothing greatly stands out, though.
Story: 2/5
The story starts with two men mourning their dead friends, preparing to revive one of them from the dead. Meanwhile, his cousin has arrived in the same area preparing to secure it, along with a very loud knight. They’re not willing to let the dead fall into enemy hands, and with the knight shouting about how her lord was a cardinal in the church, a fight ensures.
The clergy come out on top, but after going to the length of reviving the dead friend, he decides necromancy is wrong, drops his corpse, and makes his knight angry. The chapter ends with him aiming to reach the afterlife himself to see the truth.
Overall, the story is functional, but doesn’t greatly stand out. I was a bit surprised that I was playing as the church, however.
Total Score: 8/20
Judge 2: BandanaSplitzzz
Gameplay: 7/10
No Grave Unturned prides itself on its unique skill mechanics, with a super cool “SP” gauge, combined with its glancing blow system. You have a very small amount of units to use, only 5, combined with a necromancer character that can revive your fallen units. Both of these mechanic combos force you to think in very different ways than standard Fire Emblem, but it’s just as interesting and just as deep. I appreciate how thought-out the secondary weapons of most characters are, giving them extra depth while still interacting with the cool coin-flipping system. Both of these systems are standout features in this hack.
The map design as a whole is a little more iffy. Enemy units are super durable and require multiple rounds of combat to defeat, which I do like. It encourages you to use up the valuable secondary resources of your characters, and makes spending SP a little more required. I tried minimizing the amount of bulky enemy units I had to kill, which made the mid-map twist even more shocking. What drags this map design around a lot is that enemies have a tendency to wait around for your units and play pretty passively. Some more robust AI settings would improve the map design a lot. Additionally, while Pewre and Orlen both have important and valuable ways of expending SP, all of your other units will just start hoarding it. It cheapens the importance of the system, as it just turns SP into a passive buff to hit.
Despite my complaints, this map and these gimmicks still rock. I’d love to see these mechanics explored more in the future.
…What’s that knight doing in the bottom right corner?
Presentation: 2/5
The presentation here is solid on all accounts. The map looks nice, the portraits look nice, the music is beautiful, uncompressed .mp3’s courtesy of Lex Talionis, which gets it an extra point. There are no animations, despite all classes being pretty vanilla, which loses it a point. Cutscenes were pretty non-dynamic, just some portraits talking over a static map. Nothing stood out, but nothing offensive.
Story: 3/5
This hack has some pretty efficient dialogue in store, particularly the first conversation between the two bosses. The rest of the dialogue had some difficulty parsing in my head with the amount of named things off-screen, but I still liked the world painted here. A lot of questions were raised in the story, leaving some nice avenues for later development. I did feel like the final dialogue twist happened a little too suddenly. Orlen didn’t really show off his distaste for the church before, other than not showing genuine affection towards his position. It could have been better foreshadowed in the story, or a little more subtly portrayed.
Total Score: 12/20
Judge 3: Fringus
Gameplay: 8/10
Combat is centered around everything hitting, either for some damage (tails) or usually MORE damage (heads), often with weapons having their own effects on one of these. If you’ve played Limbus Company, it’s a very familiar system, and easy to pick up if you haven’t. The nature of it is swingy (even as the SP mechanic lets you build up ways of reliably landing heads). But this works to the nature of the game, with your lord being readily available to revive any fallen allies via SP, and readily restoring their own SP via a very, very useful PRF.
It’s fast, frantic, and leaves every combat a fun match of weighing immediate risks/rewards against future benefits. All while being just loose enough that you very well can make mistakes while rewarding effective play. The things holding this back are an odd bug that can make a fallen ally’s remains disappear when dying on top that I couldn’t consistently have happen. Along with the near end of the map not having much to do beyond walk for a few turns. Regardless, it remained an incredibly fun time for most of the game.
Presentation: 3/5
The mug and UI are both all around great and very consistent, and the “blinking” on Johannes got a jump out of me the first time I noticed. Music and mapping lands well, nice while also fitting the overall vibes. The coin that popped up to tell you if the attack was heads/tails was also another nice touch. Though, Pewre’s mug has errors on the talk frames and more majorly, a bug after the end scene pitch black for almost the entire time it’s used.
Story: 3/5
A promising member of a group of necromancers is forcibly dragged in by his aide to handle a deserter, and pick up a coveted corpse from there along the way. Orlen’s rapidly-failing attempt to mentally distance himself from having to do something he hates and Pewre’s mix of suckup and gloryfiend is fun to read. It’s fairly brief in overall text but what’s there both works well, and is hits the grim tone it sets out for well.
Though the rest of the playable cast goes unmentioned when it really feels like they should’ve had something to say, especially around the ending.
Total Score: 14/20
Judge 4: Electric Serge
Gameplay: 4/10
This map has two unique central mechanics: SP, which is a secondary hit modifier that can be modulated depending on several factors, including killing the enemy, having weapon triangle advantage, or simply, dealing more damage during combat, and the coinflip system, where instead of hitting and missing, you either deal damage or deal more damage, with a couple of variations. These are interesting mechanics that spice up the standard combat of an FE map a nice bit; since weapon hit rates are much lower across the board, making a mad dash to stock up on as much SP as possible early on so you could land stronger hits consistently was somewhat enjoyable.
What wasn’t enjoyable was the actual map proper. In short, most of the enemies don’t attack until you walk into their range, making it very easy to inch forward and pick them off one by one since there’s not really a time limit either. The top boss also has a movement range displayed but doesn’t actually move, while the bottom boss, likely due to an oversight, doesn’t have the weapon ranks to use his basic weapons. I also had the misfortune of the game crashing not once, but twice, and since you can’t save midmap, both crashes sent me back to the start of the map, which was quite the opposite of fun. It’s a shame, because the mechanics featured have potential for a more polished map or even a full game, but I can’t reasonably give this a high score with all the problems I experienced.
Presentation: 3/5
The heavy nighttime shading on the map makes it look quite nice, and the music choice complimented the mood the map was trying to go for quite nicely. Portraits look pretty good, too, but the lack of animations when classes were vanilla Fire Emblem classes was a pretty hefty letdown. Pretty good overall, but there’s still room for improvement.
Story: 3/5
(Disclaimer: The 2nd time the game crashed was at the very end of the map, and I did not feel like replaying it again to see the ending cutscenes. As such, I apologize if you think my score is too low due to me not factoring the ending in.)
There’s some neat worldbuilding stuff going on, what with both factions in this battle seeking to revive the dead for different reasons. I liked the dynamic between Orlen and Pewre, with the former’s uneasiness about desecrating a corpse of a former acquaintance bouncing off of Pewre’s eagerness to smite some sinners and do the job quite well. Not too heavy on dialogue, but what’s there is nice, though I wish the other playable characters had something to say.
Total Score: 10/20
Results
| Category | Darrman | Bandana | Fringus | Serge | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gameplay | 4 | 7 | 8 | 4 | 23 |
| Presentation | 2 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 10 |
| Story | 2 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 11 |
| Total | 8 | 12 | 14 | 10 | 44 |